Careerism, and the Lessons of my Working Class Parents
“Good Credit, Good Healthcare, and Good Community.” This was the answer Mom gave me a few years ago when I asked her what lessons she’s learned over the years about what one needs to thrive in this society.
I’m not entirely sure why I asked Mom this question to begin with. We were sitting on the porch of my in-law's house in the Adirondack Mountains. It’s one of those sunroom-type porches, surrounded by windows and overlooking part of Lake Champlain. The breeze enters through the screen door on the left side of the room and circulates through the many places one can sit and look at the water that rests a few houses below.
Each year my partner and I do a “parents week” where my parents, my partner, the dog, and I all go to my in-law's home for a week in the Summer. It’s become a tradition and an opportunity to spend time with our parents. Often in these gatherings, I ask my parents or my in-laws questions about life, their experiences, and the lessons they’ve learned over the years. So while I don’t remember what exactly prompted my question to my mother, the context of the question made a lot of sense — even if the answer wasn’t quite what I expected.
“Good Credit, Good Healthcare, and Good Community. That’s all you need to thrive” my mom replied. So I asked her to elaborate so I could follow her reasoning. She shared:
“Well, when you’re poor you know that your credit score can make or break you at a moment’s notice. If you have an emergency and need to borrow, or simply need to take out a loan for something as necessary as a car, good credit helps you get what you need at that moment. Regarding the second, nothing is more important than your health and your ability to care for yourself and your family. That’s why good healthcare is important. But at the end of the day, a good community is actually the most important of the three. Jobs come and go, but people around you who can bring you food and groceries when you’ve run out of money, who can care for your children when you need a moment of respite, who can cry with you in a moment of loss, and who can laugh with you and remind you that life is about those you love and the memories you build — that’s more important than anything else in the world.”
What surprised me about her response was how quick she was to offer it. But what has lingered over the years, deepening in meaning, was how much it reflected her experience navigating an unequal world. Mom’s answer didn’t talk about career or money. Indeed, for her, money was a tool to navigate this society but it was ultimately fleeting. And a career was important, but her experiences — as a migrant, as a Latina, as a working-class individual with disabilities — demonstrated that at any point you could lose everything and need to start over. And when you lose everything, what are the things that will structurally sustain you while you arrive at that next chapter?
“Good credit, good healthcare, and, above all, a good community.”
As I’ve journeyed into adulthood and navigated my career I’ve come to realize how much my parent’s posture towards thriving and success has shaped me and the decisions I’ve made. What Mom offered in her upstate New York reflections was a vantage point from which to engage and understand success and what constitutes a “good life.” Such a vision wasn’t about career or even about money but instead about leaning into systems around you that would encourage care. And care, in her vision, wasn’t merely about health and financial stability. Care also encompassed situating yourself in social networks that would care for you emotionally, that would provide in your time of need, and that would center joy and laughter in a world that often was too harsh.
In this way, my parents never quite situated their ideas of “success” in institutions or prestige. As a high schooler looking at colleges and discerning between majors and post-graduation work, Dad constantly said “we need to work because in this society we care for our families by working. But if you have the privilege to do so, the best work you can find is work where you wake up each morning excited to start a new day.” For him, deciding what to do in life wasn’t about seeking the most prestigious position or the place with the highest salary. Rather, it was about finding places that can cultivate joy.
He would go one step further. Reflecting on the multiple experiences of workplace discrimination he had faced over the years, Dad shared that no job was more important than your dignity and your joy. For him, to evaluate a potential opportunity solely because of salary or prestige wasn’t enough. Your energy, your soul, and your thriving were more pertinent to the process of discernment.
Often people talk about “working class sensibilities” and the fact that people who grow up poor and working class and then enter white-collar professions never fully acclimate to the culture of the white-collar world — a reality that is doubly so for people of color. I would say the same is true for institutions of higher education where students who come from poor and working-class backgrounds never quite adjust to the culture of these institutions: one that, especially in elite private spaces, revolves around fancy dinners and a kind of extractive networking that is driven by careerism. In these spaces, making decisions based on community, mission, and care is sometimes foreign if not antithetical to a culture of upward mobility whereby through your work you seek to make the biggest name for yourself that you possibly can.
Career, then, becomes synonymous with your value as a person. Prestige becomes the litmus test by which your impact is measured.
But when you were raised in a context where food, work, and even housing were never assumed to be guaranteed, “career” isn’t necessarily a particularly compelling reason to make decisions about your life. Indeed, when you were raised in a poor and working-class context you learn that everything — including your career — can be taken from you at any moment.
Such an ethic has shaped many decisions I’ve made now as an adult. Given the opportunity to study at prestigious, ivy league schools, I’ve turned instead to lesser-known institutions that I believed could better care for me and my family. Given the opportunity to pursue high-paying jobs, I’ve chosen a smaller paycheck knowing that each day I would wake up happy and proud of the ways I’ve cared for, and been cared for by, my community of concern and accountability.
Over and over again these decisions have made me an anomaly in white-collar spaces where career is the central litmus test for how you move and operate in society. And this reality has made me question whether or not I have made the right choices. Perhaps I should have gone to the more “elite” institution or taken the higher-paying job. Perhaps that’s how I could have made a greater contribution for the people I care about.
But that’s just it.
“Contribution.”
“Care.”
Oftentimes in the hamster wheel of careerism the litmus test for your success isn’t how you poured into, or showed up, for the people who love you. In fact, at its most toxic the drive of careerism can alienate us from what it even means to be alive — to love, to care for, to build community — because these things are seen as distractions from the endless pursuit of upward mobility.
“Good Credit, Good Healthcare, and, above all, Good Community.”
While I would rather live in a world where credit was unnecessary and healthcare guaranteed, the fact remains that my poor/working-class parents instilled in me a deep understanding that “career” isn’t everything. Jobs are fleeting, dignity and joy are priceless, and a community of care — chosen, adopted, or born into — will sustain you well beyond the lifespan of some institutions.
Those of us who were raised in poor/working-class families are often pegged as “oddities” by the white-collar world because even as we enter its spaces we never quite conform to its culture. But as the days go on I wonder if being an oddity is truly that bad, when the most toxic iteration of the alternative has the capacity to alienate you from everything that makes life worth living.
